This invention relates to a portable device that includes conductive grids close enough to each other to be bridged by an insect and connected to a source of voltage having a magnitude sufficient to force a fatal current through an insect. The grids are in a portable structure that also includes means for generating a current of air that can be brought to bear upon an insect to draw it into the grids and thereby destroy it.
The devices used heretofore to electrocute insects have large structures permanently mounted on supporting means and connected to a source of house current. Such a device requires that the insect be attracted to it by a lamp. When the insect gets close enough, it enters a stream of moving air produced by a fan associated with the device, and this stream pushes the insect the rest of the way into contact with the electrode structure that kills it. Such devices are shown by Gawne in U.S. Pat. No. 3,319,374; Headstrom in U.S. Pat. No. 4,387,529; and by Nilssen in U.S. Pat. No. 4,422,015.
Other existing devices also depend on a lamp to attract the insect into a moving stream of air, but instead of electrocuting the insect, it is forced into a container from which it cannot escape. Such devices are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 1,693,368 to Cherry; U.S. Pat. No. 2,780,026 to Dail, et al.; and U.S. Pat. No. 2,778,150 to Pohlman.
Schuman discloses a manually operated device for producing a vacuum. The device also has a light to attract insects, and the intake part of the device can be brought into the vicinity of an insect at which time a valve can be opened to cause the vacuum to draw the insect the rest of the way into a container.